Congressional Record, Volume 156 Issue 111 (Tuesday, July 27, 2010)

[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 27, 2010)]
[House]
[Pages H6153-H6159]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

STUDENT LOANS

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 6, 2009, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert) is recognized
for 60 minutes.
Mr. GOHMERT. Mr. Speaker, it's always an honor to be on this floor.
But at times it gets very difficult hearing positions put as being mine
which were not mine.
I would like to point out, for example, about student loans. I have
student loans. We gave up--well, I won't even get into that. The only
asset my wife and I have left is our home so that we could have the
honor of being public servants.
We've got a lot of student loans, and I cannot imagine a worse
scenario than having to come begging to an administration that we
already see punishes Republican States, Republican communities, and beg
the administration for a student loan, because there is no one else
that makes student loans besides the government.

[[Page H6154]]

There were people that fought a revolution to avoid having the
government, the King, make all the calls on who got to be educated,
well-educated, that is, and who got to be property owners, who got to
be well-to-do. They fought a revolution so that we would have the
chance, the opportunity to at least succeed ourselves without having a
government pick the winners and losers. That was the last thing they
wanted.
Patrick Henry talked about that. Is life so dear and peace so sweet
that it can be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it,
Almighty God.
They did not want the government to tell them what they could have
and not have, what they could do and not do, who could have their
children educated and who couldn't. And we have grown into a government
that tells everybody everything they have to do.
And now, though some of us read those disastrous health care bills,
others are just now finding out the things we tried to warn about: that
it was not about health care, it was about the GRE, the Government
Running Everything.
So now we find out in the news what some of us already knew. Gee,
people are surprised to find out the government, under that disastrous
health care bill, so-called, will keep everybody's records.
And then people were surprised to find out that the health care czar
says we may require everyone to have a body mass index, so we know who
all is fat in this country and who isn't, who's more fat than others.
That's the government's business? It wasn't after the revolution.

They didn't want the government to say who could eat what and who
couldn't eat this and that. My gracious. They got upset over a tea tax.
If they could only see what's happened now.
But, my friends are honorable people. So are they all, all honorable
people. Come not to praise this country. Apparently, we're coming to
bury it and to start with a new country where the government controls
everything.
Boy, Shakespeare could have a day with what's going on now.
The government, our friend the government, is going to tell us who
gets health care. We tried to warn people that if this health care bill
passed, it would mean rationing. It passes, signed into law, all kinds
of joyous occasions, and then we find out the President puts in charge
the ration king. It shouldn't have surprised anybody. The President
himself said to that dear lady at the White House, tea party precedent,
whatever they tried to bill it as, when she said, what about my mother?
She had a pacemaker put in, and she's had all these additional years of
really quality life. And the President ends up, after stammering around
for a while saying, maybe we'd been better off to just tell your mom to
take a pain pill. Those were his words. Maybe we'd have been better off
telling her to take a pain pill.
I don't want the government to have that kind of power. Your mom
lives, your mom dies. You live, you die.
Was the revolution for nothing but 200 years?
And now we've left all personal responsibility. We don't want
personal responsibility. We're going to let the government tell us who
can have a college-educated child and who can't.
We've seen what happened under this majority with the African
Americans who had come begging in this city saying, please don't end
the voucher program that was started under the Republicans. We weren't
sure about it.
One dear lady was talking about her children, how one had been
brutalized, but others had been able to go to a good school, a private
school because they got a voucher, and it allowed them the freedom to
have their child as educated as any rich Democrat in this city.
But apparently, as Clarence Thomas points out, and I can't do his
book justice, ``My Grandfather's Son,'' he talked about being raised in
a poor, poor African American community by loving grandparents who had
very little. And he talked about his grandfather pointing out that some
snakes, you don't have to worry so much about because you see them.
They make a big deal if they're going to try to bite you from the
front. But you have to worry about those that will sneak up on you, act
like they're no big deal, just kind of blend in, and all of a sudden
they bite you.
And that's what he talks about, as I understood him to talk about
this soft form of discrimination. You know, we're going to help you.
We're going to provide for you. We're going to take care of you. But
don't have a thought of your own because if you dare, as a minority, to
have a thought of your own and try to rise above your circumstances on
your own, we're going to slap you down. And that, as he talks about in
his book, is the kind of discrimination that can hurt worse than any
kind.
The liberals who would talk to him, and you could tell they only
wanted to talk about sports, or how he had been mistreated as a poor
black growing up in America; whereas others, he began to notice, as a
radical liberal himself, Clarence Thomas in the early days, bitter
about what he had been through, began to notice that conservatives
would talk to him and wanted to know his opinion about a lot of
different things, including politics.
And he began to see that soft discrimination from liberals. Yeah,
we'll help you. We'll provide for you, but you've got to do what we
tell you, because if you dare to have a thought of your own, if you
dare to think for yourself, if you dare to try to rise above your
circumstances, we'll slap you down.

{time} 2200

As he said during those hearings, it was an electronic lynching that
he got.
And what's tragic through it all, when you go back and review his
incredible school record, growing up with the poverty he did, the man
had and has a brilliant intellect, but you wouldn't know it from the
liberals. They were out to slap him down.
And here you have African American mothers coming to Congress saying,
Please, don't let the voucher program go. Allow us not to have our kids
educated where they can be shot and be part of gangs, but where they
can go and have a uniform and get a great education and end up being
very wealthy or very powerful down the road, much like the President
himself did.
Why wouldn't you want that for every child. Regardless of the race,
creed, color, nationality, why wouldn't you want that for the child?
Give them a voucher. Let them chose what school they can go to so they
don't have to worry about their child being shot, killed, brutalized by
gangs.
You want to talk about what this majority did? They struck that
program down and condemned minorities in this city back to the poor
schools from which they came. Don't you dare try to rise above your
circumstances. We want you back in the poor schools where you will have
to rely totally on us. Why not let them reach their God-given
potential? Slapping them down.
And our friends across the aisle want to come in here and trash-mouth
Republicans because we had concerns about the government taking over
all of the student loan business. Yes, I do, and I always will. The
government gets to tell us who's going to get a loan, whose child gets
a college education? Yes, I've got a problem with that.
One of our friends across the aisle says it's like a car wobbling
down the aisle or the street, he said. And people on our side of the
aisle, he says, don't even want to try to fix it. Well, guess who set
it to wobbling? Our friends across the aisle. And guess what? I am so
sick and tired about hearing all of this trash mouth of the last 2
years of the Bush Presidency and how terrible the last year of the Bush
Presidency was and how bad the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency was,
because guess who was in charge? It sure wasn't George W. Bush. He was
over there in the executive branch. But the Constitution makes clear
that the people who run the country will be the Congress. That the
President down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, right down that
way, he can't appropriate one dime for any program. It has to come from
the Congress.
So what happened? Our friends across the aisle appropriately
complained that during the Bush early years the Republicans got giddy
and began spending too much, began to have a $160 billion annual
deficit in their budget. And so our friends across the aisle said,
Throw them out. Put us in. They're overspending. We'll fix things.

[[Page H6155]]

And so the voters appropriately said, Republicans, you have been
overspending. We loved you in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, when
you, not President Clinton--he was in the office. He fought the
Republican Congress kicking and screaming. But when they would have
enough votes over here, he couldn't stop them, vetoed a few things.
When he couldn't stop the Congress, they had folks across the aisle
that realized they wouldn't get reelected if they didn't vote for
balanced budgets, then the Republican Congress brought President
Clinton around.
And that's why I love the comment from my colleague across the aisle
about the Clinton administration. He said, There were problems except
for the blip during the Clinton administration. That's right. There was
4 years of Democrat control in this House as they brought our financial
situation closer and closer to the day we are now. And as my Democratic
colleague pointed out, there was a blip during the Clinton
administration after the Contract with America when Republicans took
over, and they balanced the budget. The President can't do that. This
Congress has to do that.
And what do we have to show this year? No budget. As one of our
Democratic colleagues said back in 2006, If you can't put together a
budget, you can't govern. This year, they didn't put together a budget.
So according to our Democratic friend, they cannot govern.
I'm proud to be joined by my friend, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, and
I'll be proud to yield to her such time that she needs.
Ms. FOXX. Thank you, Congressman Gohmert. I wasn't subjected to
listening to the entire last hour, but I am responding to your email.
We know for a long time that our colleagues who just preceded us have
often been on the floor and made some really outrageous comments where
they rewrite history and present things as facts that just can't be
backed up with facts. And in response to your plea to come share some
of the truth telling with you, I'm glad to join you this evening. I did
bring a few facts with me that I want to share.

But I heard the last 5 minutes or so of our colleagues, and I was
really astounded at some of the words that they used, like their ``pro-
growth agenda'' and how our tax-cutting policy was not paid for and how
they did everything under PAYGO except very, very rare emergencies
where they had to go outside of PAYGO and that we were so irresponsible
that we would just not vote for the PAYGO bill.
I find it really like the book ``1984.'' I would say to people, if
you haven't read the book ``1984'' or if you haven't read it in a long
time, take some time to read it, because what you're seeing here from
our colleagues on the other side of the aisle is ``1984'' being played
out in the year 2010.
I do want to bring some facts to it, and I'm glad, Madam Speaker,
that Congressman Gohmert is explaining the fact that under the Clinton
years, which we hear so much about and which I, on the Rules Committee,
am often having to correct various chairmen, such as the chairman of
the Budget Committee when he came to the Rules Committee who bragged
about the surplus at the end of the Clinton years. And I asked him,
well, who was in charge of the Congress the last 6 years of President
Clinton's administration? And he really didn't want to have to say, but
he had to finally admit it was Republicans.
And then he talked about the terrible situation under the last 2
years of the Bush administration. I had to again say, Now, remind me
again who was in charge of the Congress under the last 2 years of the
Bush administration. And of course it was our colleagues across the
aisle, the Democrats.
And we have to constantly remind them, as my colleague from Texas has
done, that the President is not able to spend money. The President
doesn't set up the appropriations bills. It's the House of
Representatives that's charged with that in the Constitution. The
President can veto a bill, and the Congress can override the veto.
But, you know, our colleagues across the aisle wouldn't even put in
an appropriations bill in the last year of President Bush's
administration because they were afraid that President Bush would veto
those bills, and they wouldn't be able to override them.

{time} 2210

And they wouldn't be able to override them because I agree with Mr.
Gohmert that Republicans did lose their way for a short period of time
when President Bush was President and the Republicans were in control
of Congress. They spent too much money. When I came here and Mr.
Gohmert came here in 2005, we brought that message from our districts
and our colleagues from all across the country brought that message,
and actually what a lot of people don't know is that we actually cut
spending in 2005 and 2006, but we get absolutely no credit for it.
Let me say, contrary to what our colleagues were saying, I did hear
them talk about what the deficit was when President Bush left office.
The little piece of fact that they left out was they were in charge of
the Congress the last 2 years of Mr. Bush's administration. When they
took over the Congress in January 2007, the deficit happened to be $458
billion and was on a trajectory to go to zero again. That would have
been wonderful.
Now, let me say, that's more of a deficit than I wanted to see, but
it was not the trillion dollar deficit that they talk about which they
created in the last 2 years of President Bush's administration. At the
end of 2008, the deficit was $1.4 trillion. In 2 years, the deficit
quadrupled. It went from $458 billion to $1.4 trillion, the largest
deficit ever. And what is it going to be this year? It's going to be
the largest deficit ever again and be even larger than the deficit that
they created in 2008.
My colleague was talking about the health care bill that passed with
only one Republican voting for it in the House, and we're all very
proud of that. Republicans are very proud of the fact that we all voted
against the health care bill the first time. The second time, no
Republicans voted for it. And what does that health care bill do
exactly? It's been extolled as such a virtuous thing but it imposes
$569 billion in new and higher taxes on businesses and individuals, and
the cost for this health care overall bill jumps to more than $1.2
trillion.
The American people are very concerned about where these folks who
are in control--I will not say anything about leadership on their
side--but they're in control, they're in charge, and they are leading
us down a path of ruin in this country.
Mr. Gohmert talked about the education situation in Washington.
Basically, the trend of these folks, the student loans, what to do
about education in Washington, the health care bill, everything that
has been done by our colleagues across the aisle, Mr. Speaker, has been
to put the government in control of our lives. Republicans don't
believe in that. That's not an American ideal. We're the freest country
in the world. That's what's made us the greatest country in the world
over the years, and we will remain the greatest country in the world as
soon as we can replace our colleagues across the aisle and put this
government on a sound footing economically.
What's threatening our freedom is the control and the bills that have
been passed that say government knows best. The government bureaucracy
is what they believe in. We believe in the American people. We believe
in government of, by, and for the American people, not government to
control the American people.
So we have to do something to stop this slide that is occurring, and
I want to give just one little example, if my colleague from Texas
would let me. There is a Web site called republicanwhip.house.gov which
has many of these items on it, and I would invite people watching to go
to this Web site. I'm just going to share with you something that our
Republican whip has put out called Weekly Waste Watch; Week 52 is this
one:
``$2 Million to Hire Goats (not people) and Fight Weeds.
``Benewah County, Idaho, recently received a $2 million Stimulus
grant for weed control. Heyburn State Park, located within the county,
will use a portion of the $2 million to fight weeds across Plummer
Creek. Their solution? Renting 540 goats to graze on the weeds.
``The South African Boer goat is the `latest weapon' in Benewah
County's fight against invasive weeds. The goats

[[Page H6156]]

have already been put to work munching on weeds like knapweed, tansy,
and St. John's wort. Each goat eats about 3\1/2\ pounds of weeds per
day and should be finished pruning the creek shoreline within the next
2 weeks.''
Now, this is the cost of the dollar per goat per day, and with 2
weeks and the taxpayer expenditure on goat employment, it should come
to roughly $7,560.
``Idaho's unemployment rate is currently at 8.8 percent. While
invasive weeds on State park land may be a problem, it is unclear how
fighting their growth by employing 540 goats and two foreign
herders''--by the way, the herders are not Americans--``will get
Americans back to work.''
This is the way they think you should spend money. They're out of
touch with reality. Most of them have never worked a job in their
lives. Many of them have been in Washington 40-plus years. They have no
idea what the average American is doing out there. They don't go home.
They won't hold town hall meetings. They're out of touch. And to
provide this kind of money to take goats to eat weeds, when we have a
9.5 percent unemployment rate--it is probably closer to 16 percent--is
really a shame.
I'd be embarrassed. I would be embarrassed if I had voted for that
stimulus package. I'd be embarrassed if I'd voted for the health care
bill. I'd be embarrassed if I'd voted for the bailouts of the
automobile companies. I'd be embarrassed if I'd done any of the things
that our colleagues across the aisle have done in the last 3\1/2\
years, almost 4 years that they've been in control while our economy
has been going in the ditch. Talk about things going in the ditch.
They've taken the economy in the ditch, and they're totally out of
touch with the American people.
Mr. GOHMERT. If I could reclaim my time, going to the June employment
numbers, I have an article here. I call him a friend. I hope he would.
Mallory Factor had written an article entitled, ``The Truth About June
Employment Numbers,'' and Mallory talks about the spin that our friends
across the aisle are creating, trying to make it sound great about the
unemployment numbers.
And as he says, ``All this spin is supposed to make us respond
positively: `Wow! Happy days are here again. The recovery must be
really gaining steam.' And we are supposed to conclude that maybe we
don't need to throw out the Democrats in the midterm elections after
all.''
Mallory goes on and says, ``The June jobs numbers show unemployment
falling .2 percent to 9.5 percent.

{time} 2220

This may sound, or this may seem, like an improvement until you
realize that this decrease is almost all caused by an additional
611,000 Americans giving up on finding jobs last month. When people
stop looking for work, unemployment percentages go down even though the
economy has not improved and may have even gotten worse.''
He goes on and says, ``Not only is unemployment the lowest in the
government sector of all industry sectors in America, Federal civilian
employees make a stunning 30 to 40 percent more in total compensation
than similarly skilled private workers, according to the Heritage
Foundation.''
Now, further, he says, basically, at the end of 2007, ``The Federal
Government's civilian payroll has actually increased by 240,000 to 2.2
million workers, excluding Census and postal workers.''
We know last month, in June, there was all this hoop-de-do about
431,000 new jobs; and that would ordinarily be fantastic, except that
411,000 of them were temporary Census workers. Anyway, Mallory goes on
and says, ``This leaves a smaller private sector supporting an ever
larger public sector. And that can't be good for the recovery.''
I yield to the gentlewoman.
Ms. FOXX. Well, I happen to have here a piece put out by the Joint
Economic Committee. This is a committee made up of Democrats and
Republicans, and I am sorry I don't have a chart to show it. I know
there is one somewhere around here, but there is a figure here that
Federal Government jobs from February 2009, when President Obama became
President, to June 2010, the number of jobs in the Federal Government
increased by 405,000. The number of private sector jobs decreased by
3,261.
When the stimulus package was passed, Dr. Christina Romer, who is his
economic adviser, chief economic adviser, promised that the
unemployment rate would not go above 8 percent and that a tremendous
number of private sector jobs would be created.
I do have this, and I want to try to show it if I can here, it shows
that under a fully controlled Republican government, Federal
Government, that is with Republicans in charge of Congress and a
Republican President, 6,690,000 million jobs were created. Under a
fully Democrat-controlled Congress, we have lost 6,403,000 jobs.
You know, again, facts are stubborn things. These are coming from the
Obama administration's own Labor Department. And what caused this to
happen? It's cutting taxes and letting the American people keep more of
the money they have earned.
Our colleagues across the aisle believe that the money, all the money
in the economy belongs to the government; and that if you have a tax
cut, it is the government giving something to the citizens. The
government does create money in the sense it prints money. However, the
government doesn't create wealth. The government destroys wealth.
Regulations and government spending destroy wealth. It's only when
you allow the American people to keep their money do you see job
growth, and we are talking about the lapsing of tax cuts that were
passed in 2001, 2003, occurring January 1; and those tax increases are
going to hit every American. They keep saying, oh, it's only going to
hit the wealthiest; they are going to hit every American. It's going to
destroy even more jobs.
And as you have pointed out, and our friend Tom McClintock from
California does so eloquently, he points out the similarities between
what's happening now with this Democratic administration and what
happened under Franklin Roosevelt in the Depression, how these policies
made the Depression worse. What they are doing at every stage is making
things worse.
Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate the point of the gentlewoman.
I would submit that it appeared that after the Republicans not only
had Congress, as they took over in January of 2005, but then also had
the White House beginning January of 2001, that there apparently is a
giddiness from controlling both Houses of Congress and the White House.
Because when there was a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, the
economy was going to Hades in a hand basket, and that's when the
Republicans took the majority, November in 1994.
So Republicans took over, and they fought tooth and nail against the
Clinton administration. They succeeded, despite the best efforts of the
Clinton administration, in balancing the budget and bringing us to the
point where things were balanced despite the President's desire to
spend out of control.
But then once the White House was obtained, January 2001, the
Republican Congress quit being as diligent. It was as if the
Republicans did not want to tell the President ``no.'' From the other
standpoint, the Bush administration didn't want to say ``no'' to
Democrats or Republicans so there were no vetoes for, I think, at least
6 years or more of President Bush's two terms.

But what we have seen since our friends across the aisle had the
House, the Senate and the White House, is giddiness, dizziness beyond
anything anybody could have ever have imagined. Where we got beat up
where it was $160 billion deficit in a year, our friends think nothing
of having 10 times that deficit in a year.
I am just shocked because I remember so vividly people on the other
side of the aisle complaining, appropriately, about not having a
balanced budget, that I am shocked that they could stand up and act
like they haven't created the biggest deficits in American history in a
year and a half, and going back the 2 years before that. It shocked me
that once our friends across the aisle took the majority November of
2006, that their runaway budgets and deficits were far more than
anything we had done in our first 2 years here in 2005 and 2006, and I
am talking about my friend, Ms. Foxx, having both been elected in 2004.
So I don't want to return to the same overspending from 2001 through
2006,

[[Page H6157]]

but I absolutely know we have got to stop the craziness from the last
3\1/2\ years of spending with our Democrat friends in charge. I would
just have to submit, with the runaway spending, and the damage that was
done to our energy programs, beginning in 2007 and 2008, as the
Democrats took control, to our economy, to our private sector, the
additional requirements that were rammed down from this Congress down
the private sector's throat, when they took over in January of 2007
and, again, in 2008, that I would submit to you that either our
Democratic friends who took the majority in January of 2007 need to
stand up and take credit for what they did in 2007 and 2008, or they
need to admit that they were the most incompetent Congress in the
history of the country.
Because you can't have it any way but one of those two ways. Either
you intentionally cause what you did in 2007 and 2008, or you were just
so incompetent you need to be put out of your misery, let out of the
majority, so that we can go on and try to straighten things up.

{time} 2230

But to sit here, and having heard friends across the aisle say, gee--
and I believe this is the quote--Republicans don't want to reduce
dependency on foreign oil, it just flies all over me. How could anybody
have ears and think that. All the people I know on this side of the
aisle want to end dependency on foreign oil. We want to end dependency
on our enemies.
And let me just add, I'm tired of paying our enemies, not only
through oil purchases--heck, the New England area just made a 20-year
contract this year with Yemen to provide liquefied natural gas that
will come rolling up in Boston Harbor. And they're hoping--and I
imagine there are a few people praying--that there will not be a
stowaway from Yemen, one of those terrorists that they were able to get
released from Guantanamo that went back to terrorism in Yemen. They're
hoping they won't be onboard that ship to blow it up and take half the
city with it.
Now, that does not make sense. I want to end any dependency on
foreign oil because I know, having been a member of the military,
having had years of military history, having been in the military 4
years, I know if you cannot produce, as a country, everything you need
in war, and especially energy, you can't win a serious war, you can't.
Some people are not aware of how dangerous the Battle of the Bulge
was at the end of World War II. Some think it was all over. That was
not true. Many historians believe, and there is evidence to support it,
that if the Germans had had enough gasoline, the Battle of the Bulge,
the bulge that was being pushed to the west through the American
front--good old Montgomery said, I've got the back back here. I'll stay
in the rear in case they break through. It would have been too late if
they had gotten Montgomery, but they ran out of gas.
My personal belief, those incidences when the German Army got so
close to American supplies of gasoline and through different flukes did
not go ahead and take the supply depots I think were acts of God. As a
result, they didn't have the gasoline they needed. Patton was able to
move in, others were able to move in, and they stopped the bulge. But
the intent was working to drive Americans back to the Atlantic Ocean,
and they ran out of gasoline.
Now we're to the point where we are so dependent on foreign oil, if
we had a major war we had to win, we would need steel. We would need
energy, gasoline, things to power our jets, the ability to make jets
like we used to. You would need wood products. You would be amazed at
how much the military requires in the way of wood product. But all of
those things you need to produce yourself--the plastics, all those
things--in order to sustain an attack against your own soil, and we're
not in a very good position right now.
It also was so infuriating to hear a colleague across the aisle say
Republicans are constantly voting against efforts to build back
manufacturing jobs in this country. I know that so many of my friends
across the aisle never met a tax they didn't like, but some of us, in a
bipartisan group, went across to China some years back, and one of the
purposes was to talk to manufacturers about, Why did you pick up your
industry and move it to China? I figured, in advance, the number one
answer we would probably get was the labor was so much cheaper, you
don't have to deal with labor unions, that kind of thing. That was an
attraction, as was fewer regulations, but the number one reason we
heard why whole industries left, took manufacturing jobs from the
United States and went to China, was how much cheaper the corporate tax
was, less than half of what we have here.
I talked to major injuries--industries--they have been injured--about
what would happen if we cut our corporate tax down to 17 percent like
China. I've heard repeatedly, We would be back in America in no time.
And yet, what do our friends across the aisle talk about? Let's heap
more and more and more tax on these mean, nasty corporations. There are
corporations like BP who have done wrong and deserve to suffer the
consequences, but corporations provide jobs, small businesses provide
jobs.
Small businesses, so many of them are subchapter S corporations, and
yet we hear from both the majority and from the President that they
want to hammer those people with higher taxes. Those are the people
that create the jobs. And the insidious thing about corporate tax--
apparently it's a secret that the other side does not want people to
know--is no corporation stays in business if they cannot pass that
corporate tax onto their customers or clients, no corporation. So it's
an insidious tax because it's paid by the folks we're trying to help,
who are the working folks, the working poor in America who are getting
those prices heaped higher and higher on them. And they're told, Oh,
don't worry, we'll make the corporations pay. And the corporations, to
stay in business, have to keep passing it down to those poor folks that
can't pay anymore.

And so in talking to folks, some people across the aisle say let's
erect trade barriers, and yet that would trigger so many problems
internationally in trade, so many punitive measures against the United
States, when what we could do is eliminate corporate taxes, and nobody
in the world could compete with how cheap our prices would be produced.
That would explode the economy upward. And as Art Laffer, Ronald
Reagan's economic advisor--boy, I sure wish he were advising this
President. As he pointed out, you can only increase the percentage of
taxes so far, and each increase, to a certain extent, will increase the
revenues in the Federal Treasury. But if you increase it too far, then
you start hurting the economy, which then, in turn, starts decreasing
the revenues into the Federal Treasury.
So if you want to maximize the tax dollars coming into the government
so our friends across the aisle can continue to buy safe havens in
China for rare dogs and cats, continue to buy safe havens for cranes in
foreign countries, continue to pay billions to Pakistan so they can
turn around and reward the Taliban that we had pretty much defeated but
they're on the rise again, if we want to keep paying enemies of our
friends, like the enemies of Israel, all this money, then we need to
have higher revenues by the Federal Treasury. And that's going to
require not raising taxes--we're too high already--but lowering.
And I know this is going to offend some of my friends across the
aisle, but you're going to have to lower taxes on the people that are
actually paying them. I know that's an affront to some people. They
think, well, the people that are paying taxes must be wealthy or they
wouldn't be paying taxes, so they should not be entitled to tax cuts.
We should give the tax cuts to people that aren't paying them. So I
know it's serious. I know it's an affront to some of my friends, but
you have to lower taxes on the people paying the taxes or the tax cuts
don't explode the economy and create new jobs.
I yield to my friend, Ms. Foxx.
Ms. FOXX. Well, I want to give a little statistic from the Small
Business Committee, which has put out a packet of material that I think
is very useful.
Since January of 2009, President Obama and Congressional Democrats
have enacted into law gross tax increases totaling more than $670
billion, or more than $2,100 for every man,

[[Page H6158]]

woman and child in the United States. The list of tax increases
includes at least 14 violations of the President's pledge not to raise
taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000 for singles and $250,000
for married couples.

{time} 2240

To back up what you were saying, according to the Congressional
Budget Office, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, if we could
have a full repeal of the death tax, we could create 1.5 million jobs
and increase small business investment capital by more than $1.6
trillion each year.
Now, you're talking about the fact that, again, our colleagues across
the aisle don't really understand that people don't have to be wealthy
to be paying these high taxes, and we know that, if they allow the tax
cuts from 2001, 2003 to expire, it is going to be the largest tax
increase in the history of this country, and that is where we are going
to hurt the economy tremendously because of that, and these are the
people actually paying taxes, as you said.
The President wants to say he gave a tax cut to 95 percent of the
American people. Well, it wasn't a cut. It was a little rebate, as I
recall, and the tax rates were not cut at all. But people can be
persuaded to think that they were given a tax cut when it was only a
rebate, and it is their money to begin with. It also went to people who
paid no taxes, as you said, and had no tax liability, and we have
things that actually give people more money back than they have
actually paid in taxes.
Where is that coming from? From the people who pay the taxes.
Mr. GOHMERT. If I could reclaim my time on that point, apparently, my
friends across the aisle do not want to recall, but the truth is that
the rebate that was $40 billion of the stimulus package, of the
Democratic Congress stimulus package of January 2008, which I did not
support and was totally against. It was $40 billion out of $160
billion, and it was going as so-called ``rebates'' to people who didn't
pay any taxes.
Yes, President Bush was in office, but the Democratic majority in the
House and Senate passed that stimulus bill with my fussing about it and
complaining about it. In fact, after President Bush's State of the
Union Address, he was coming up the aisle over here, and I asked him a
question. I didn't realize the microphone was picking my question up,
but I asked:
By the way, Mr. President, how do you give a rebate to people who
didn't put any ``bate'' in?
The question still stands. How do you give a rebate to somebody who
didn't put something in to begin with? It's not a rebate. It's a
giveaway. You are redistributing wealth from people who have worked
hard, who have earned it and who have paid taxes on it so that people
here in our majority party could give it away to others who they wanted
to give it to.
That does not encourage job growth. It does something that encouraged
me to leave the bench and run for Congress, and that is because this
Congress was incentivizing people to never achieve their God-given
potential, and Congress should never be in that business. We should
incentivize people to do their best and to become all they can be.
I know my friend Ms. Foxx, having been president of a university, has
spent a lifetime working to try to help people reach their potential.
That's what we all ought to be doing. You know, when you have 30, 40
percent of high school students dropping out and never finishing high
school, those kids are going to be condemned to never reaching the
potential that they have.
Why wouldn't you want to give vouchers to kids and say, ``Go get the
very best education you can possibly get''?
``We don't care how poor the neighborhood is that you're growing up
in. If you want to go where the rich Democrats' children go to school,
here is a voucher. Go there. Get as good an education as they have.
Don't let people try to push you down as they did Clarence Thomas when
he was growing up. Let's help you reach your God-given potential. Go
where you can get the best education.''
What happens when you do that?
Schools know they've got to get better because, if they don't get
better, no one is going to choose to go to their schools. So they have
to be more picky about the teachers they hire. They have to be really
good teachers or nobody is going to want to have those teachers. That's
kind of the American way, and that is kind of the way America became
the greatest nation in the history of the world. We are in danger of
losing that. It is a dangerous time.
My friends across the aisle have continued to say that Republicans
hope President Obama fails. I hope President Obama succeeds. I would
love it if he became the most successful President in helping people
reach the great American dream of any President in our history, but if
he continues to try to have the government take over all of the private
sector, if he continues to take over health care so that his czar, who
is unaccountable to the Congress, can tell people which person lives
and which person dies, I sure don't want that to succeed. I want him to
succeed as a great President.

There are the words of George Washington when he resigned his
commission. It was the only time in history anybody has ever led a
revolution as the head of the military, has ever won the revolution as
the head of the military, and has resigned and gone home. He sent this
beautiful resignation letter.
In it, at the end, he says, ``I now make it my earnest prayer that
God would have you and the state over which you preside in his holy
protection.''
He goes down toward the end and says, in talking about God, ``And
finally, that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to
do justice, to love mercy and to demean ourselves with that charity,
humility, and specific temper of mind which were the characteristics of
the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble
imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a
happy nation.''
George Washington says, if President Obama wants to have a happy
nation, he needs to inspire this nation to have the characteristics of
the ``Divine Author'' of our blessed religion and without a humble
imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a
happy nation.
We are in trouble. We are in big trouble in this country, and it does
not help when the government takes over health care.
There is an article here, dated July 24, in the New York Times:
``Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care.'' It talks about the aim
now is clear ``to shift control of England's $160 billion annual health
budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level.''
Do you want to talk about Republicans not being in support of
education? I am not in support of this educational bureaucracy. Think
about what individual school districts in America could do if you took
the billions of dollars that this Education Department has lavished on
itself over the years and if you put that money to work hiring good
teachers, not administrators who are simply going to have to respond to
all of the bureaucratic redtape put out by the Federal Government,
which requires bureaucratic redtape and bureaucratic jobs in each State
capital, which require bureaucratic redtape and new administrators in
every school district.
It is time for the madness to stop. It is time to put the money where
it will do the most good and to quit spending the rest of it.
I have a bill, the U.N. Voting Accountability bill, that I will bring
to the floor with a discharge petition in September, when we come back.
I am hoping my friends on the other side of the aisle, as well as
friends on this side of the aisle, will sign on. It is very simple. It
will end what has happened as to our apparently having given, according
to the recent reports, billions of dollars to Pakistan, billions of
dollars which have found their way into helping the people who are
killing American soldiers.

{time} 2250

We're paying people indirectly to kill American soldiers. As I've
said repeatedly, you don't have to pay people to hate you. They'll do
it for free.
My U.N. Voting Accountability Act says any nation that votes against
the U.S. position on a contested vote more than half the time will
receive no financial assistance from the United

[[Page H6159]]

States the following year. Very simple. It eliminates those problems,
because Pakistan's made very clear in the U.N. they're going to fight
us and oppose everything we believe and hold dear.
I don't hope President Obama fails. I hope he will reach the stage of
enlightenment that will allow him to see that every government that's
tried these socialized efforts to take over car industries,
manufacturing, banking, health care, always results in failure.
And it's time to get back to what George Washington described as the
characteristic of the divine author of our blessed religion, without a
humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to
be a happy nation.

____________________